Due or Die

by Jenn McKinlay

  They stepped toward the door and Lindsey realized Charlie wasn’t following.

  “Are you coming?” she asked him.

  “In a minute,” he said. He started up the stairs. “I need my guitar. ‘Looking for Lindsey’ sounds like a top-ten hit to me.”

  Lindsey and Sully exchanged a look and then a shrug. Charlie was always looking for his one-hit wonder.

  Nancy was already making Sully’s tea when they returned to the living room.

  “Michael Sullivan, what are you thinking?” Nancy asked. “What could bring you out in this?”

  Lindsey glanced at Carrie. She was looking at Sully with scared eyes, as if she had expected something much more malevolent and couldn’t quite process the large quiet man before her.

  “Bad news, actually,” he said.

  He had their attention now. Lindsey mentally ran through a panicked list of people who could be in trouble. Was it Beth? Or Jessica? How about Ann Marie? Her boys? Surely, nothing had happened to them. Was it one of her crafternoon buddies? Or Milton? What about Milton? Yes, he was fitter than men half his age, but he was still in his eighties and he lived alone.

  Sully took a sip of his tea and then glanced up. Lindsey realized that the others must have looked as nervous as she did, because he frowned and said, “No one is hurt.”

  “You might want to lead with that next time,” Nancy said, and she swatted him with the dish towel she’d been fretting in her hands.

  “Sorry,” he said. To his credit, he really did look remorseful.

  “What’s the bad news, then?” Lindsey asked. She gestured to a seat by the fire, and Sully gratefully sank down into it.

  Heathcliff took the opportunity to wriggle into Sully’s lap, even though he was by no means a lap dog. Sully grinned and let him try to curl up on his legs while he held his tea out of tail-knocking range and steadied the puppy with his other hand.

  Lindsey glanced at his face and realized he must have been working all day and well into the night. His skin looked stretched and his eyes had a heavy-lidded weariness that bespoke someone who hadn’t slept in a few days.

  “The heavy snowfall caused the roof to collapse on the Drury Street storage facility,” he said.

  “Oh, no,” Carrie said. “Are you sure no one was hurt?”

  “Luckily, because of the weather, no one was out there, but the damage to the goods inside is going to be severe.”

  Carrie nodded. Then she turned to Lindsey and said, “That’s where the Friends store all of their donated books for the annual book sale.”

  Lindsey thought the name sounded familiar. “That’s the one on the edge of town that’s owned by Owen Pullman, isn’t it?” she asked.

  “Yes,” Nancy confirmed. “Was the whole place destroyed or just a few of the sheds?”

  “About half,” Sully said. “Owen called me a few hours ago. I use a shed out there to store old paperwork and boating equipment. Owen was pretty distraught, so I told him I’d get word to the other owners if he gave me a list.”

  “I hope he was insured,” Lindsey said.

  “I think the physical structures will be covered, but I don’t know if the contents will be,” Sully said.

  “I’ll call Mimi Seitler tomorrow and see if we can get a list of what we had in the shed,” Carrie said. “I know we had some rare books donated a while back. I hope they weren’t just boxed and put out there. That could be disastrous.”

  “Do you want me to call Bill Sint?” Lindsey asked. “He may be more forthcoming, talking to me.”

  Carrie thought about it for a moment. “I appreciate that, but he’s going to have to start talking to me sometime. It might as well be now. I’ll call him in the morning, too.”

  Lindsey noticed that Carrie had a little color in her cheeks and her eyes had lost some of their grief-stricken haze. She was a doer; maybe having a cause like the warehouse collapse would help her through this stressful time.

  Sully finished his tea and Nancy reached out to take his mug.

  “Thanks,” he said. “That hit the spot. If you all don’t mind, I’m going to get some shut-eye. The storm is supposed to blow over by morning, but I have a feeling the digging out may take a few days.”

  Lindsey felt the sore muscles in her shoulders bunch in protest at the thought of more digging, and she winced.

  “Care to walk me out?” Sully asked her.

  Lindsey was about to answer when Nancy said, “Of course she will.”

  Lindsey turned to look at her. Subtle, Nancy was not.

  “What?” Nancy asked, the picture of innocence. “Someone has to lock the door behind him.”

  Sully grinned at Lindsey as he rose from his seat. He picked up a candle and stopped before her chair and held out his free hand to help her up. Lindsey let him pull her out of the chair. To her surprise, he didn’t let go of her hand as they walked toward the door.

  Lindsey felt her pulse kick up a notch. As if he knew, Sully looked down at her and grinned. His dimples bracketed his mouth and his smile almost outshone the candle he held in his other hand.

  The strains of Charlie’s guitar could be heard up above, and Lindsey noticed that Heathcliff hadn’t followed them to the door. When she glanced back, he was getting a treat that looked suspiciously like bacon from Nancy.

  She closed the door behind them. The foyer was cold and she shivered. Sully set the candle down on the windowsill above the radiator. Their shadows flickered against the wall as a small draft from the window made the candle dance.

  “I had an ulterior motive for getting you out here,” he said.

  So much for the cold; Lindsey felt her whole body flash hot with anticipation.

  “Really?” she asked. “So you were trying to get me alone?”

  Sully’s grin deepened and Lindsey was mortified to hear that her voice held a decidedly flirty tone. It was too late to retract the words, and she felt her face heat up in embarrassment.

  “What I meant to say was—” she began, but he interrupted her by pulling her close.

  “You’re shivering,” he said. He opened his coat and hugged her close.

  The proximity to his warmth made her dizzy, and she was relieved that he was holding her up or she might have toppled over from the contact.

  His voice was close to her ear, and when he spoke, his words were little more than a whisper.

  “I didn’t want to say anything to Carrie,” he said. “But I don’t think the warehouse roof collapsed because of the snow.”

  “What?” She pulled back and discovered her face was just inches from his.

  In the candlelight, his normally bright blue eyes had darkened to a deep navy, and she was momentarily distracted by the heady scent of him, a masculine bay-rum sort of smell, and she lost the thread of the conversation.

  “About ten sheds were demolished,” he said. “From what I could tell, a small explosive was used to do the damage. I think whoever did it was counting on the blizzard being blamed.”

  “But why?”

  Sully shrugged and Lindsey felt his hands slide up and down her back at the movement. She swallowed hard, trying to clear her head.

  “The target could be any one of them, but the Friends shed was in the center of the rubble, leading me to think it’s the one that was the object of the break-in.”

  Lindsey blinked and tried to focus on his words. Someone had deliberately broken into the storage shed.

  “Do the police know?” she asked.

  “I haven’t said anything yet. Owen thinks it was the storm and until the police have a chance to check it out, nothing is for sure.”

  “We need to find out what was in that shed,” she said.

  She glanced up to see if he agreed and found him studying her. His gaze traced her features, and he looked as if he was contemplating kissing her. Lindsey felt her breath stall in her lungs.

  In an instant, she knew that she would welcome it, and that she could no longer deny that she had a case of the
scorching hots for Mike Sullivan.

  He leaned down; she leaned up. They were a breath apart when a door slammed above them, followed by the pounding sound of Converse sneakers bounding down the stairs in their direction.

  Lindsey and Sully broke apart. She cupped the back of her neck with a hand and tried to appear casual as Charlie popped into the foyer with them.

  “Leaving already?” Charlie asked.

  Sully glared at him, looking like he wanted to pick him up and toss him out into the snow. For some reason this made Lindsey feel unaccountably better. She didn’t want to be the only one feeling denied, and she was quite pleased that Sully looked as frustrated as she felt.

  Sully looked over at her and said, “Lock the door behind me.”

  She gave him a snappy salute, and his mouth curved up in one corner. He opened the door and gave her a scorching look. “We’ll revisit this conversation later.”

  CHAPTER

  19

  BRIAR CREEK

  PUBLIC LIBRARY

  The door shut behind him and Lindsey stood staring at it until Charlie nudged her.

  “Your candle blew out,” he said.

  Lindsey couldn’t have disagreed more, but she picked up the smoking wax stub from the windowsill and followed him back into the main room.

  Nancy and Carrie were huddled by the fire. No one said as much, but they all started to assume their sleep positions. Somehow, while the storm raged outside, it felt as if there was strength, or at least warmth, in numbers.

  Charlie stretched out in his recliner while Lindsey took the other. Heathcliff climbed up with her and Lindsey snuggled him close.

  Carrie and Nancy departed to their rooms, and a silence fell over the house, broken only by the whistling wind and the occasional hiss from the gas fire, which Nancy had turned down to blue flicker.

  Even though it warmed her from the toes on up, Lindsey decided not to think about Sully or what might have happened in the foyer if Charlie had been just a few minutes later. She wasn’t sure if he had been planning to kiss her or if it was just her own temporary insanity at being that close to an attractive man.

  It had been almost a year since she’d left John, and she wasn’t sure she could even read a signal from a man anymore. She had the horrible feeling that she was going to embarrass herself by leaning in to kiss Sully when he was merely trying to tell her she had spinach in her teeth.

  She decided to think about what Sully had told her about the warehouse instead. He thought the damage had been deliberate. But why?

  The books donated to the Friends were everything from a lifetime collection of National Geographic to an oily repair manual for a Yugo. Why would anyone want to bust into their shed?

  Having no answers, her mind wandered back to Markus Rushton’s murder. A rifle shot through a sliding glass door that no one heard; there were so many things wrong with this scenario it was hard to tell where to begin.

  Could it have been one of the men he’d recently had an altercation with? It seemed unlikely, but any newspaper in the country reported stories of murder for even less. It was a mystery. One she intended to solve before Carrie became the winner of the most-likely-to-have-shot-him award.

  * * *

  A light awoke Lindsey first thing in the morning. She blinked against the intrusion, and it took her a moment to realize it wasn’t just any light but the lamp beside the chair where she was sleeping. They had electricity!

  “Charlie!” she shouted as she bolted upright. “Wake up. We have light!”

  “Hunh, what?” Charlie grunted.

  “Light and power!” Lindsey repeated.

  Nancy and Carrie stumbled from their rooms, looking bewildered.

  “What’s happening?” Carrie asked.

  “Behold,” Lindsey said. “Light.”

  She flicked on all of the nearby light switches, and Nancy clapped her hands together and jumped up and down.

  “I’ll start the coffeepot,” she said.

  “Shower,” Lindsey said. “I’m going to take a hot shower, plug in my cell phone and reprogram my clocks. I’ll be back.”

  She bolted up the stairs with Heathcliff at her heels. It was such a relief to go back into her apartment and be able to turn on the lights, play the radio and know that she wasn’t limited by battery life.

  She was towel drying her long blond hair when her phone rang. She was so happy to have her cordless working again that she didn’t bother checking the caller ID.

  “Hello,” she answered.

  “I’ll be watching you,” the voice on the line said.

  “Excuse me,” Lindsey said. She clutched the phone to her ear, concentrating on the caller’s words.

  “You heard me. I’ll be watching you, and if you know what’s good for you, you’ll do the right thing.”

  The caller hung up. The bubble of joy Lindsey had been feeling at listening to NPR popped like a soap bubble.

  She knew that voice. She was unlikely to forget that shrill tone anytime soon. It was Batty Bilson.

  She settled the receiver in its cradle. Should she call the police? It seemed trivial given all that they had going on. Marjorie hadn’t threatened her exactly, although it sort of felt that way.

  No, she wasn’t going to cause a stir over this. She would call her staff and get the library back open, then she would deal with Marjorie Bilson and her cryptic message.

  It took Lindsey and Beth the better part of the morning to shovel out the building. Once the walkways were clear and Lindsey felt that patrons and staff could navigate the stairs and enter the building without risking a broken limb, she opened the library. It was a few hours later than usual, but at least they were open.

  The book drop was full. When they opened the door to the small room, a tidal wave of books slid into the main room. Lindsey stooped down to pick them up and put them on a cart. The covers were icy-cold to the touch.

  Ms. Cole was logging in to her computer at the check-in desk, getting ready to deal with the deluge of books. Once she and Beth had filled a cart, Lindsey wheeled it over to Ms. Cole. She glanced at the check-in screen on Ms. Cole’s monitor and frowned.

  “Ms. Cole, you have today’s date as the check-in date,” she said.

  “We are checking them in today,” Ms. Cole said.

  Lindsey could almost hear the unspoken duh at the end of her sentence.

  “Yes, but the library was closed for two and a half days. We need to go back three days, so that people who returned their books on time don’t get fined unfairly.”

  Ms. Cole looked outraged. “But what about people whose materials were due three days ago, who just returned them today?”

  “They get amnesty,” Lindsey said with a shrug.

  “Well, I just…that’s just…”

  “It’s just what?”

  “It’s setting a horrible precedent,” Ms. Cole said. Her bosom heaved with her agitation. “I mean, people might expect…they might demand…”

  “Good customer service?” Lindsey supplied.

  “Exactly!” Ms. Cole said. “They might think that we’ll always bend the rules just for them. I’m telling you, you’re inviting anarchy.”

  “I’m afraid I’m going to have to risk it,” Lindsey said.

  When Ms. Cole looked like she might continue her protest, Lindsey held up her hand, indicating the conversation was over.

  “I’m sorry, but this is how we’re going to do it,” Lindsey said. She leaned over Ms. Cole’s chair, took her computer mouse and clicked the check-in date back three days. She saved the change and then went back to the book drop to load another cart, leaving the lemon sputtering behind her.

  “How very unlike Mr. Tupper you are,” Beth said with a teasing smile. She handed Lindsey a stack of books.

  “He wouldn’t have rolled back the check-in date?” Lindsey arranged the books on the truck.

  “He would have let Ms. Cole decide,” Beth said.

  “Oh, I don’t think that’s
wise,” Lindsey said.

  “It wasn’t,” Beth agreed. “But between you and me, I think he was afraid of her.”

  Lindsey glanced over her shoulder to where Ms. Cole was muttering while the check-in machine beeped with each item. She was in shades of brown today. Not her best color.

  “Maybe that’s why he retired to Florida,” Lindsey said.

  Once the drop was empty, Beth went to man her desk in children’s while Lindsey wheeled the cart over to Ann Marie to assist Ms. Cole with the check-in. She’d called in their teen shelvers for an extra afternoon shift later in the day to help get them on track, and all was slowly getting back to normal in the quiet little library.

  Lindsey walked over to the big windows that looked over the town. Huge drifts of snow still covered the park, but the roads had been sanded and salted and were just becoming passable.

  She glanced over at the pier. She wondered if Sully was around. She noticed that several of the boat owners were out checking their rigs, including the charter boat that Dale Wilcox owned.

  She could just make out a man in a navy blue hooded sweatshirt, unzipped, with a knit cap on his head and yellow waders. He was stomping around the end of the pier, looking ornery. She knew without being told that this was Dale Wilcox.

  She glanced over her shoulder at the library. It was quiet. Most people were home digging out from the blizzard or they were back at their first day of work.

  The clock on the wall showed it was fifteen minutes until her lunch hour. Good enough. She turned away from the window and headed toward her office.

  If she dragged it out, getting suited up to go out into the cold could take at least five minutes. She slipped off her favorite loafers and slipped on her storm chaser boots from L.L.Bean. Scarf, hat, jacket and mittens were next and she was ready.

  She strode out of her office and stopped in the children’s area.

  Beth glanced up in surprise. “Going somewhere?”

  “I’m going to get some soup at the Blue Anchor,” she said. If she actually did pick up soup, then it wasn’t a total lie. “Can I bring you some?”

  “Are you kidding? If you bring me some of Mary’s chowder, I’ll be your best friend,” Beth said.